


at first sight

by FifteenDozenTimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gladnis Week, M/M, Scarification, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 11:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12911457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/FifteenDozenTimes
Summary: Ignis will never again look at Gladio the way he used to. That doesn't need to matter.





	at first sight

**Author's Note:**

> For Gladnis Week Day 1 - Tattoos.

It’s something of a joke among the hunters and the glaives who’ve been around Ignis when Gladio returns from a long hunt. There’s a version of Ignis who would be upset about that, becoming predictable, easy to read, someone people smirk at fondly. He died; this Ignis can’t be bothered. The crunch of truck wheels on gravel, and Ignis drops whatever he’s doing; the slamming open and closed of doors, and Ignis begins removing his gloves; the near-silent steps of Gladio not-quite-running to him, and Ignis stands to meet Gladio with hands on his arms and lips tilted up for an enthusiastic hello.

Gladio and Ignis have been apart for so long, this time. Ignis loses track, but he left for a hunt, and when he returned to Lestallum Gladio had left for Meldacio, and Ignis never knew how long he was there because he’d taken off tracking a pair of behemoths halfway to the shores of the Cygillan. Ignis has been back in Lestallum for some time now, with no word for weeks (months?) of Gladio’s whereabouts, until a day or two ago when Prompto arrived, somewhat confused he’d beaten Gladio to the outpost. So maybe Ignis holds on a little tighter, leans in a little harder; maybe he deserves Prompto’s fond “gross” and the rolled eyes he knows accompany it.

He kicks backwards in the direction of Prompto’s shin anyway, and if he wasn’t actually sure he’d connect until he did, nobody need ever know. Gladio rumbles low in his chest and breaks their kiss, tilting his forehead against Ignis’ and just breathing him in. Ignis loosens his grip on Gladio’s arms so he can run his hands over them, reacquainting himself and looking for new scars.

There are - there are a _lot_ of new scars, a tight network of raised, hardened lines crisscrossing each other from his right shoulder to wrist. Ignis frowns, and pulls away enough for Gladio to see it.

“It’s not what it feels like,” Gladio says. “Look harder.”

*

It’s still new, when Ignis drives Gladio to the tattoo parlor; Gladio’s hand on his thigh, and before that Gladio’s soft sleepy smile when Ignis woke next to him, and before that the night spent together. A long time coming, but still new, and fragile, and perfect. It’s new enough to bring a flush to Ignis’ cheeks when Gladio tugs off his shirt, newer still that Ignis doesn’t look away in embarrassment when Gladio winks at him. New enough Ignis feels an odd, uncomfortable spike of jealousy when the tattoo artist runs his hands over Gladio’s back, mapping the shape of him before beginning to sketch out an eagle, tail-first, on Gladio’s lower back.

“Who’s bigger,” Gladio asks, with a smirk, and Ignis’ eyebrows shoot up to his hairline before he realizes Gladio isn’t addressing him. “Me, or my father when you did his?”

“Clarus,” says the man who looks like he may be upwards of 100 years old, and may have another 100 in him.

“Are you su - “

“Clarus,” he says again, expression carefully blank.

“I’m pretty - “

“You’re very impressive, Gladio,” Ignis says, his voice as bland as he can make it with Gladio’s chest and stomach and hipbones on display for him. He didn’t leave any marks, but it feels like his fingerprints are pressed in stark black ink all over him, every inch. “Now let the man work.”

Gladio grumbles, but Ignis doesn’t miss the color in his cheeks or the way his eyes light up a little at the word _impressive_. Ignis isn’t used to making Gladio look like that yet; to keep anyone from seeing him grin like a lovesick fool, he pulls out his laptop and gets to work on the backlog of emails that piled up while he was showing Gladio exactly how much of a lovesick fool he could be the night before.

The times and locations of four separate meetings have been changed, Noctis’ schedule for the next week rearranged until it’s unrecognizable, cloyingly polite answers to tiresome questions have been dispatched, all the small gears of the Citadel’s daily grind properly oiled the way apparently only Ignis can, when Gladio kicks a little at Ignis’ stool and startles him out of his focus.

“Time for the good part,” he says, nearly giddy with anticipation. “Gonna hold my hand?”

*

Gladio tries not to be cavalier about injuries he knows will worry Ignis, he truly does, so Ignis takes a deep breath, and another, and swallows back the rush of questions about what could hurt Gladio like this, such thin scars, so many of them. He lifts one hand to Gladio’s face, cups his cheek and traces his thumb over the shape of Gladio’s gentle smile, and calmly lets his fingers follow one of the scars slashed across his arm, to where it meets another, to where that meets another, on and on down the length of his arm and back up to his shoulder. Not a grid; the lines curve, come to points before curving up to meet the next, almost like scales, almost like - almost like feathers.

“Gladio,” Ignis says, quieter than intended because his heart is taking up too much space in his chest for his lungs to take in enough air. “What did you _do_?”

“I hate that you can’t see it anymore,” he says, just as quiet; he’s not supposed to do that, put his own feelings about Ignis’ sight on Ignis’ shoulders, but Ignis is looking at his tattoo for the first time in half a decade and he can’t bring himself to care. Gladio shifts away from him, out of reach, so he can rest his hand on the small of Ignis’ back and guide him away to some privacy.

As soon as Gladio’s shut the door of the tiny apartment they share with too many people in one of the few blocks of Lestallum not closed to hunters, Ignis has both hands on him again, one tracking his expressions, one relearning the grand sweep of Gladio’s tattoo over his muscles.

“You haven’t answered me,” he says. “What - how?”

“Carefully,” Gladio says, and laughs when Ignis frowns. “You’re not going to like it. A friend with a knife and some skill with fire, he traced the outlines and cauterized it so it wouldn’t heal right. Or so it’d heal the way I wanted.”

“You couldn’t have fought well, like that.”

“I trusted my team. And there’s a reason I’ve only done one arm so far.”

“So far.”

“I’m being careful, Iggy.”

It’s not fair, the way Gladio can calm him just by acknowledging his right to worry, but Ignis let that go a long time ago. Gladio’s smile is soft, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes more pronounced than the last time Ignis saw him; Gladio’s face gets farther from the way it looked the last time Ignis used his eyes and not his hands to look. Gladio’s tattoo, at least this part of it, is once again as clear as it was when he was eighteen.

“See that you are,” he says, and lets himself melt into Gladio’s arms the way Gladio’s been waiting for.

*

Gladio sprawls across the bed, taking up more room than he has any right to even at his size. He’s a touch too warm under Ignis’ hands as he spreads ointment over the thick black lines newly decorating the skin Ignis is still getting used to being able to touch, and he can’t seem to decide whether to sigh the way he does when Ignis massages his sore shoulders or groan like the time he got a sunburn on a camping trip with his father and Ignis was so fascinated he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“My dad’s coming next time,” Gladio mumbles into the mattress. “He promised.”

“He’s already started rearranging things, he’s absolutely ruining my schedule.”

Gladio laughs a little; shifts to sprawl over Ignis’ lap when Ignis finishes applying the ointment and sits back. 

“Still want you to do this part,” he says, into Ignis’ legs this time. “Take a nap with me?”

“I don’t nap,” Ignis says, but he stuffs some pillows behind his back and leans against the headboard. “I’ll be here, though.”

*

It took a little over a month for Gladio’s tattoo to be finished; three years pass from the day Ignis saw it again to the day he can sweep his hands over the broad expanse of Gladio’s back and see the whole thing again. It’s an unforgivable luxury, to lock the door and ignore the needs of the dark world outside, but Ignis steals the day to spend in bed with Gladio, letting his fingers look as long as he wants.


End file.
